Using wireless mesh networking to connect devices to each other, and to cloud-based services, is increasingly popular for sensing environmental conditions, controlling equipment, and providing information and alerts to users. Radio regulatory regimes and resource constraints in low-power mesh networks and devices limit the payload size of data packets that are communicated in the mesh network. Some mesh network applications may require larger payloads than can be transmitted in a single data packet. Many devices on mesh networks are designed to operate for extended periods of time on battery power, which limits the available computing, user interface, and radio resources in the devices. Increasing the size of data packets leads to transmitting larger packets over the mesh network, which increases power consumption, the use of computing and memory resources, increases the probability of packet collisions, and reduces network capacity.
While each application running on a mesh network could be designed to perform segmentation and reassembly of data packets at an application level, this would burden each application developer with creating a custom solution for segmentation, as well as considering the security, efficiency, and reliability of segmenting and reassembling data packet payloads.